For a moment the girl's eyes closed. Then, slowly, they opened once more, and she stood erect in the _Pervods'_ grasp. Her breath came faster. "Do you think me so weak that I'd betray my goddess and my people to save myself?" she cried passionately. A wave of wild, half-hysterical laughter shook her. "I know what you want! You seek not Xaymar, but Xaymar's secret--the way she harnessed the power that lies within the lightning, a power so great that with it you might rule the universe! But you will not have it! Bring on your crew, your coleoptera--" Haral went rigid in the _hwalon's_ saddle. The girl's words rang in his ears, his brain. There it was! There lay the secret, the prize that had lured Sark here to Ulna! A prize of power. The search for it had led this slim girl-priestess here, to death, dishonor. The fear that such a secret might go to Sark, be lost to Ulna, had spurred the old high priest, Namboina, to dark plots and plans for murder. Power! Haral's fist clenched. The lust for it had driven him on bloody courses that stretched across half this solar system. It had earned him a name, that lust; and then it had put a price on his head to match it, till at last he'd had no choice but to flee out here, beyond all law, to this mad, twisted world of Ulna. And now--? Within him his heart was pounding, pounding, like the beat of one of Titan's great _corba dia_; and of a sudden he knew it was destiny that had brought him to the blood and dirt and heat of this foul arena. His own dark destiny that had marked him out from day of birth to carve an empire.... As from afar, he heard Sark's furious voice lashing out at Kyla: "Defy me, will you? Then so be it!" The raider surged up, half out of the riding-chair. Savagely, he slapped the slim girl-priestess across the face, so hard that his webbed fingers left great welts of white and scarlet. "To the ring with her! To the ring!" The _Pervods_ jerked Kyla back. Roughly, they dragged her to the fenced ring that served as pit for the arena and threw her in. In his turn, the blue man shifted. The tension was running high within him now, locked in the icy bands of iron-nerved control. Once more, he surveyed the howling crowd and Sark's mongrel raider crewmen, then smiled to himself with dark, reckless mirth. Fat face still livid, Sark sank back into the depths of his riding-chair. "Who's first?" he cried. "Who wants to test the brave priestess?" * * * * * A shout burst forth from a hundred savage throats. A churning mass of nightmare forms of life thrust forward. But before the raider chief could even make a choice, a huge, hairy, heavy-thewed Uranian _dau_ was charging to the fence. Full seven feet tall he stood, and he bowled the others from his path like _byul_-balls, a living avalanche of lust. Leaping high in the air, he caught the top strand of the cable and swung up and over, dropping into the arena like some monstrous, many-armed Earth gorilla.